Impact of Social Media signals on SERPS

Of all the factors that impact rankings in SERPS, social media platforms are becoming one of the most popular and effective means of marketing your business and promoting your brand. With increasing interest from the Search Engines, social media signals such as Facebook likes, retweets and Google+s are becoming recognised as key metrics in ranking a website’s position in the search engine results. With the advent of social media as a determining SERPS metric, marketers will necessarily have to reconsider their marketing strategies to include social media in all its inherent characteristic elements. Even though there is a lack of clarity surrounding how it actually impacts SEO results there is a tacit acceptance on the part of the major search engines that social media does affect results as a ranking metric. The one definite is the growing need for marketers to align optimisation with social media efforts to improve website performance. To achieve that alignment there are certain measures you can take to market your business more effectively:

High quality content has always been king in the SEO stakes and continues to be an ever present essential ingredient and website element for optimal performance. This is an industry constant requiring repeated emphasis since setting the content right at the very start provides a solid foundation for SEO success. It is essential to remember that the whole process of optimising a website is to attract online visitors and potential customers to your online business. If your marketing campaigns and strategies work your site will consequently grab more visitors. High quality unique content contributes to improved site visibility and user experience as it answers search queries in a more precise and informative manner. If you provide that essential authentic service to potential customers they will click and buy into your site – products or services. Quality content is also the mainstay of social media marketing. In planning your content, your strategy should extend beyond simply link building and keyword optimisation. Website traffic continues to be driven to a large extent by that same juice – quality over quantity content – the rich content that offers your website visitors a valuable, informative and comprehensive direct response to their search queries. A rule of thumb in this context is always to post high-quality content that serves all purposes in fulfilling user requests.

It is a mammoth achievement to induce your readers and followers to share social media content on social platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin in one simple click. This provides you with an immediate opportunity to become visible to more people. Your content will potentially reach out to thousands of prospective customers. On a comparative scale, social sharing equates to the historical word-of-mouth marketing which helps create brand awareness in drawing traffic to that brand. Media sharing strategies can now be integrated with quick takeaways which encourage the followers to deliberately share. The whole emphasis has turned from brand awareness concentration to customer considerations and promotion.

Your webpages will attract and retain visitor attention if written content is counterbalanced with an even more popular form of content presentation – images and videos. Modern generations of millennials reared on large screen and TV productions and coloured adverts as well as PC, laptop and smart phone technologies respond much better to the visual medium as opposed to the written word. Harnessing those trends by introducing images and videos into content can only attract more of that age group who are fast becoming mainline consumers.This potential sector of mass consumers is a fantastic source of traffic and you should tap into it by whatever means necessary. You have to offer them what they find most enjoyable to get the desired outcome. In response to the many social and media challenges taking place around us, marketers need to plan content and marketing strategies that incorporate not only this growing element of SEO but all other relevant elements that converge to create a holistic marketing mix strategy.

Becoming a thought leader in your specialist subject or particular area of knowledge through building a blog following is an influential element in social media SEO, especially if you include authorship metadata. This is the most vital aspect to consider when posting a blog. Placing the author’s image alongside their blog is proving to be a determining factor regarding the impact of Google authorship on SEO. It is now an accepted component in Search Engine performance. This is a productive way of slowly building popularity with your blogs and of building your online reputation.

The measures you implement to make social media a more effective ranking metric in SERPS must be systematically monitored and analysed to ascertain the key elements that are most effective in your SEO campaign. It is a continuous loop of fine-tuning those campaigns to determine what works best and what does not so you can focus on the elements that prove more effective as SEO strategies.

Social Media is therefore deployed to enhance site performance in addressing site goals such as improving site awareness, generating leads, driving sales and promoting customer care. Goals can only be achieved through continuous monitoring and analysis of statistical data and proactively acting on those results. If you would like further information on our SEO Dublin services please contact us.